A lot of people were probably whispering why? Especially if they still viewed Scott the way a TV news director did long ago.

He'd received a résumé tape from an aspiring sportscaster. He was not impressed.

"You suck," he told Scott. "You'll never make it in this business."

The news director probably went on to a career in aluminum-siding sales. Scott went on to be one of the preeminent voices of a sports generation.

The way Scott voiced things did not appeal to everybody. But you didn't have to be a fan of his style to admire the man.

"Not to go Frank Sinatra on you," Charles Davis said, "but he did it his way."

Davis is the lead college football analyst and NFL analyst for Fox Sports. He was close to Scott, who worked at Orlando's WESH-Channel 2 from 1990-93.

It was obvious Scott was headed for bigger things than doing stand-ups at the Boone-Edgewater game. ESPN grabbed him, and Scott grew as the network became a monolith.

Everybody at the Worldwide Leader had their shtick, but the great ones broke molds. That didn't mean they were critically acclaimed (see: Chris Berman) or universally embraced (see: Keith Olbermann).

Viewers were just attracted by their unique approach. Nobody was more unique than Scott, who died Sunday from cancer at age 49.

"Boo-yah!"

His hip-hop stylings appealed to an audience that had never been spoken to. Athletes got it. So did the young urban demographic the media and advertisers covet.

Others, not so much.

Scott was blasted as a contrived, catchphrase-stealing jock sniffer who was "trying to cram blackness down our throats." I got all that from just one old blog post on Sunday.

Another thing most TV greats have in common is millions of people who don't think they're great. That's inevitable when you take chances.

"He took the barrage but never wavered," Davis said. "A lot of us would have wavered."

He was popular enough to be the commencement speaker at his alma mater, North Carolina, in 2001. The mere fact a bastion of higher education like UNC would invite Mr. Boo-yah to speak caused a campus stink.

Scott got up and said he knew phrases like "Playa hatin'" were lost on a lot of viewers. He wasn't on air to cram them down anyone's throat.

"Diversity means understanding," he said. "How you were raised, where you were raised. What shapes you is only a small piece of the pie. You don't have to understand or like every slice. You just have to accept there are more slices than you've known."

It would sell Scott short to say he was just a hip-hoppin' chatterbox. He could cue up gravitas when needed. He was renowned for his work ethic. He didn't need a teleprompter to tell him who was leading the NFL in interceptions or why Miguel Cabrera should be MVP.

About the only thing quiet about Scott was his dignity. He battled cancer for years but rarely spoke of it.

"You beat cancer by how you live," he said while accepting the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at last year's ESPYs.

Though he was frail, few knew how dire his situation was. That stoicism added to the shock and sadness when he died Sunday.

Sports stars and celebrities expressed sorrow. So did President Obama and countless other admirers.

"He won," Davis said.

Scott didn't just succeed, he touched millions of people. What's more, he did it on his own terms.